First Encounter
by Holly Chase
Summary: A not-so innocent question; 'One million dollars or a Clue' ended with a bang for the Starling triplets. They think that they'll be up and Hunting again in no time. Then, Sinead meets a clown with a red balloon one night in hospital after the Franklin Institute disaster… For Sinead, this nightmare has only just begun.


**A/N: I'bve been writing this on and off for a while. Hope it turned out alright.**

**Summary: **A_ not-so innocent question; 'One million dollars or a Clue?' ended with a bang for the Starling triplets. They think that they'll be up and Hunting again in no time. Then, Sinead meets a clown with a red balloon one night in hospital after the Franklin Institute disaster… How the mole first met the Vespers._

* * *

First Encounter

Sinead Starling was utterly certain that she was seeing things. Strike that she was completely, utterly and wholly sure that she was seeing things. The reason that Sinead thought this was because, when you were hospitalized in a secure ward with passcodes and specialised doctors, that last thing you would expect to enter your room would be a man in a clown suite. And yet, there one stood at the foot of her bed. It had a bright painted mouth and a white face. Purple arches were smeared around the eyes. Sinead opened her bandaged mouth, ready to let loose a scream that would wake her brothers in the beds beside hers and the doctors and possibly the rest of America. She sucked in a huge breath… and then the clown crossed the room.

A single red balloon floated behind, dragged by a thin ribbon held in a gloved hand. The clown pressed a finger to its lips as it strode towards Ted's bed. Sinead watched in horror, unable to make a noise as the clown drew a jewel encrusted dagger from one of its yellow pockets. The blade glinted silver in the almost non-existent light.

"No," Sinead whispered, her throat dry with fear as the clown padded towards her brother. The clown continued walking, its comically over-large shoes making no noise. It paused, red nose shining and smiled a terrifying grin. Sinead winced as she had to move her head in order to keep the clown in sight. She almost reached towards the emergency cord dangling by her elbow but the sight of the dagger positioned over Ted's throat stopped her from doing just that.

The clown without removing the blade from Ted's neck pushed the balloon towards Sinead. It bobbed along and when it reached grabbing distance Sinead lunged for it, not caring about the jabs of pain that sprung across her torso like fire.

"Read it," the clown hissed making Sinead jump. A small scrap of paper was tied to the end of the string, and she pulled it, releasing the balloon and read the message:

_154.154._

_2,92,67,7 - 172,92 - 154,172,1,79,4 - 172,92,79,29,16,22,172._

_92,137 – 7,56,154,7 – 278,92,190,137 – 1,137,92,172,22,7,137,154 – 4,29,7._

_210 _

_(VIII, XXX)_

Sinead blinked in confusion at the jumble of numbers.

"See you soon," the clown narrowed its eyes threateningly before gliding across the floor and slipping through the door. Sinead's eyes watered slightly as she stared at the sheet. What did it mean? And 'see you soon'? Sinead didn't even want to think about what that could mean.

And yet… it _had_ to be about the Clue Hunt. That was the only explanation. Someone was after the Clues, and they wanted Sinead to give them to her. Well, the only Clue that she and her brothers had was iron solute and _everyone_ had received that clue. And she wasn't giving up that clue to a bunch of Clue Hunter wannabies. Sinead lay back against the cushions, mind made up, something else began to nag at the back of her mind. Why? If they were after the Clues, why come after the only non-guaranteed option?

It would only make sense if they were after the Starling triplets. And that would only make sense if they were after the clues. Sinead's head pounded with confusion. What was the _point_? Nobody smart enough to break into the hospital room here could be so stupid as to not plan ahead. She must have missed something.

For a brief moment she played with the idea of just falling asleep, certainly the prospect seemed inviting, but the nagging thought just wouldn't leave. With a sigh Sinead un-strapped her left arm from the grip and slid her laptop from the desk to her lap. She gave a little gasp of pain as it connected with her scarred limbs, but she snapped open the lid and began to type. Sinead glanced furtively at the sleeping brothers. By the light of her screen she could see their faces on either side of her, each facing inwards as if finding support in their tender moments by trying to remain a solitary unit. They needed to remain united, now more than ever with Ted's sight problems and Ned's brain tumours.

Sinead gritted her teeth in anger and frustration as she blinked tears from her green eyes. One day she would make the Holts pay for what they did to her brothers.

She would not cry, Sinead vowed as she waited for Google to load, until they rued the day that they made an enemy of Sinead Starling.

Her morbid thoughts were halted by the arrival of the familiar webpage. Sinead smiled at it fondly, Google, created by her ancestor had never let her down before. She just had to know what to type in.

What was she trying to find? The code or the clown?

_Hospital clowns_, Sinead keyed into the bar. A couple of happy children holding balloons and a website promoting clown visits to hospitals. Sinead leaned forward and began to type again.

_Codes_:websites on how to construct your own secret languages and write letters without anyone else understanding. Sinead felt a familiar electric sensation buzzing up her fingers. She was close. Her Ekaterina sense was fuzzy, numbing her brain until all she could see was the numbers. Super sharp calculations swirled through her head, number patterns and comparisons mingling together in a way that only an Ekat's mind could process.

Suddenly like a lightning bolt storming through black clouds it struck her.

_The Fibonacci code sequence,_ a similarity struck her at how the numbers could stand for… for… _letters_.

The numbers _had_ to stand for letters, which meant that this was some sort of message. Sinead shivered, feeling the presence of the killer clown grace the room with a sickening jolt. She calmed as she realized it was nothing but a slight draft coming from the open door. She _had_ to solve it. The clown hadn't killed her brothers that time, but she didn't want to know what would happen if she didn't decode the message.

Would she wake up and find one, or even both of them, dead? Or would they be stolen from her during the night? Either way, Sinead didn't want to risk it.

_154.154. _Sinead stared at the numbers until they blurred. The numbers stood for a letter, but why repeat? Sinead ran through her mental thesaurus.

_I and A_ were the only matches. I. I.? No: A. A.? No.

_They didn't make sense!_

Sinead snapped shut her laptop angrily, barely resisting the urge to throw it across the room. The closed her eyes and focused.

_Breathe in… and out…_

She opened her eyes seconds later, a new spark of determination flaring like green fire.

Her natural logical instincts kicked in as she assessed the letter, this time with an uncanny cunning that could not be achieved when worrying. Her reasoning skills, carefully crafted by expert tutors, kicked into action as she assessed the note. It seemed like a catastrophe of numbers, rambling along, complete chaos.

'_Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered': _ an old Ekat saying but relevant even now to her. The letter wasn't chaos; she just had to work out its meaning.

Maybe she could gain a clue from the way the letter was set out…

_154.154._

They two numbers were at the top of the page on their own, like the way that in a letter, there would be a… a… _name._

Who's though? A name with only two letters. Then her eyes zeroed in on the dots. Not just blobs of ink as she had first thought, but definite full stops. So initials?

_Her initials, 154.154. _

_S.S._

Sinead Starling.

The roar of triumph blasted in her ears before she focused once more on the writing, she would celebrate once she had completely finished.

The letter still made no sense at all, with all its muddled numbers and signs. She leant back on her bed, not even wincing as her muscles screamed. Then she froze.

_1,137,92,172,22,7,137,154 _

She knew that.

But where from?

_B,R,O,T,H,E,R,S_

_Brothers. _But how did she know that?

Suddenly she remembered she reached under the hospital bed again, this time pulling out a navy rucksack. Sinead rummaged inside for a moment before triumphantly pulling out her journal. It was something she had started up again only recently, finding that the only way to say everything she wanted to was to write, and write, and write. She hadn't recorded in it before the Clue Hunt since she was an eight year old, but something that had stuck in her mind when she had leafed through it before was… _there_.

_We made up a new code today; well, I did. It's really clever; mommy and daddy were really impressed. So were Ted and Ned! And Arthur, he said that _he_ might even have to use it one day! Mommy looked worried when he said that, so did Hope. But he just laughed and ruffled my hair. Little Amy wanted to see, but it is a strictly Starling code._

_Anyway, it will make a really cool way to pass notes to each other in class when we are repeating something _again_. It starts with the letter A and the number 1. To find B, you add the first number, which is zero to the 1. This makes 1 as well. To make C, you add 1 and this makes 2. To find D, you add 2 and this makes 4 __etc. each time adding the next number to the letter you have to get the next, until you finally get to the letter Z which is 303._

Underneath in Ted's handwriting was neatly printed:

_Brothers and sister._

_1,137,92,172,22,7,137,154 – 1,79,4 – 154,29,154,172,7,137._

Sinead's heart froze.

How… who… how could someone know that code?

Had someone read her diaries? Spied on she and her sibling's notes to one another? Watched them?

Sinead shivered with apprehension. Had a clown been following her for her entire life? The thought almost made her laugh. Almost.

A smiling clown carrying a knife hunting you from the shadows of your childhood is a frightening thought.

How could someone have gotten that code? She could never have been spied on, she realized. Her parents had always protected their children from non-family members and even the Holts; she had never met until she was eleven. Sinead and her own brothers also had never been… lax… with security, favouring paranoia to perfidy.

Sinead smiled slightly, she loved alliteration.

She pushed away the nauseatingly shaken feeling that her life was not what she had thought it was, and concentrated once again on the letter. It was more important to decode the message than take a possibly very long, very suspicious walk down memory lane. Sinead's inhumanly ingenious brain worked out the message in less than five minutes.

_Sinead Starling,_

_Come to stand tonight. Or else your brothers die._

_V_

_(VIII,XXX)_

Sinead's heart stopped in her chest. She forgot to breathe. Her old diary fell from the tips of her immobile fingers crashing to the ground with a noise that seemed as loud as the Franklin Institute bomb to Sinead. It obviously wasn't because Ted and Ned continued to sleep, small smiles creased their faces as they looked younger and more carefree then they had in a long time. Sinead momentarily thought of how she must look. A lot older than what she was, more serious like she had seen things that others could only imagine and maybe even not then. That was what the Clue Hunt did though, it made people grow up.

_At least we experienced childhood_, Sinead thought, _even if we didn't enjoy it as much as I wish we had._

Then another thought struck her with such clarity Sinead wondered how she hadn't noticed before. _We aren't even the youngest; Amy and Ian are only thirteen and the others, Dan, Madison, Reagan and even Natalie, although she doesn't act it, are only eleven. They're just kids, they should be acting like kids, not collecting the Clues that could make or break the world._

Sinead wondered for the first time whether they were out of their league. They hadn't even completed Clue one and they were in hospital with serious injuries. Maybe it would have been better to leave things to the adults. Irina or Alistair would know what they were doing far better than any other competitors.

_We are still kids;_ Sinead glanced at the Batman watch next to Ned's bed, _even if we don't want to believe it,_ her gaze drifted to the files and buzzing generator beside the tiny wristwatch.

Hesitantly, Sinead reached towards the papers and pulled them from under the lamp. It wobbled precariously for moment or two before settling back into the unmoving room. The files rustled deafeningly in the silence as Sinead scrunched up her eyes to make out the words.

_STARLINGS FOREVER!_

Sinead laughed quietly. Of course they couldn't give up. Once the doctors found the cures, or even better, the triplets discovered it themselves, they would get back to hunting. They _would_ win.

Unless, of course, Sinead didn't get to the 'stand'. Sinead almost groaned with exasperation, what was wrong with her? She seemed to be getting distracted more and more easily of late, reassuring herself over and over that her brothers would be alright. They would be alright; Sinead reminded herself again, they _would_ be.

There she went again!

_Stop it,_ she berated herself,_ just stop thinking about it._

The last part of the letter was completely palpable. _(VIII,XXX) _Eight thirty. She had to reach some sort of stand by eight thirty tonight. Sinead pressed a button on Ned's watch causing it to light up and flash the time in red bursts. Eight.

Horror swept over Sinead like sea water over a drowning man. What stand? Where? It could be stand two continents away for all she knew! She glanced at the watch again, twenty-seven minutes past. In panic she swept away the crisp sheets wincing as her scars spasmed, she pulled the clear wires from her stomach letting out only a whimper of pain, and wearily placed one gruesomely disfigured foot on the cold floor.

She sucked in a scream when her pad began to bleed spilling red blood onto the hospital whiteness with piercing contrast. Flames seemed to engulf Sinead's body as she spread her legs for balance and it took all her energy not a cry when her body pleaded with her to rest. But Sinead was an Ekaterina, and Ekat's went with their minds, not their bodies.

Sinead held onto the bars on her bed and pressed the watches button again, five past. Less than half an hour to find the 'stand'. Sinead almost collapsed onto the floor with anguish, she had failed her brothers. She had failed her parents and she had failed herself. With wobbling baby-steps, all the time holding onto her bed-frame Sinead shuffled towards the blacked-out window.

Slowly, she pushed away the blinds and looked out at the almost deserted street outside the hospital. It looked so peaceful, in the houses across the streets young children would be sleeping, dreaming. Not knowing the fate of the world rested in the hands of an extremely dysfunctional family. The school further along was a soothing sight. Swings and see-saws scattered in the play-ground, old buildings were hundreds of people had sat and learnt, even the old worn sports equipment that had been used before by some many others gave the school a comforting look. A flash of red caught Sinead's eye.

She focused on the baseball field. Something was on the stands, floating and seemingly weighed down. A red balloon in the stands?

The nerves in Sinead's head connected before Sinead had finished processing the image. Her hand flew to her mouth and she spun around, not noticing as another wound below her elbow reopened.

Her strawberry hair swirled in a mesmerizing pattern that glowed in the moon's light. Then Sinead was gone, taking off so fast that for a couple of seconds there was a Sinead-shaped shadow in the room. Ned yawned sleepily and closed his eyes again, weird dream.

Sinead hurried along the corridor. She darted from wall to wall, slipping like a ghost around doorways, her feet pattering and her breath speeding. She skidded to a stop by a lift and pressed the down button. Normally she wouldn't use a lift at any circumstance; it was too small a space to manoeuvre in, but they were on the very top floor so it would take forever to climb down all forty-seven flights of steps and Sinead didn't have long.

The lift arrived agonisingly sluggishly, making an uncomforting rattling noise all the while. Once the doors opened, Sinead pressed the ground floor button. She sat in the floor watching her own blood begin to pool around her in fascination. The coolness of the metal was a relief to Sinead after her exhausting run down the hall.

In her weariness, she almost didn't notice the lift slowing down until the lift gave a warning blast that started Sinead to her feet.

'_Boarding, boarding,'_ Sinead panicked. Where could she hide? If they found her then she would be sent back to the ward and probably put under supervision.

And then her brothers would die.

Sinead looked up.

* * *

Michel Wiltshire was over-worked. Not only was he over-worked, he was under-paid and over-abused.

_I'm the person who matters around here,_ he thought grumpily as he boarded the lift.

_If this wasn't a clean building then they'd all get shut-down._

He brushed his mop absently over the metal floor and pressed the ground floor button. He rubbed his forehead momentarily before swearing. Quietly of course; these Doctors had freaky hearing.

And dirty shoes.

Humming an un-tuneful sort of melody, Michel waited patiently for the lift to reach the lowest floor. He was due to meet Claurice at the pub in twenty minutes. No, not Claurice, Gina yeah, he was meeting Gina.

He shook his head, forgetting your date's name was pretty much the worst thing you could do.

The lift clanged open, Michel pushed his trolley onto the landing, and for a second could have sworn he heard an exhale from behind him. But the doors shut before he could process the thought.

He shrugged, locking the janitor's cupboard; it probably wasn't anything to worry about.

* * *

Sinead let out a sigh as the caretaker left the lift. Her sweaty fingers slipped on the metal overhangs and she lowered herself to the ground again. She waited for a minute gathering her breath and then she cautiously reopened the lift and poked her head out of the silver box. She checked the watch in the moonlit reception area. Quarter past.

Sinead ran out of the hospital building, bandages flying behind her like flags. Her bare feet skimmed across the gravelly tarmac, grating at her delicately growing skin. Not even checking the road before she crossed, Sinead plunged onwards until the school's gates loomed above her. Panting, Sinead rested her hands on her knees for a second. She usually was a pretty good runner, with playing lacrosse, but apparently surgery could really harm a person's form.

With a cat-like grace, Sinead halted in front of the gateway. It was railed, so she could possibly climb it. But it was pretty high…

Sinead shook her head and back up a couple of paces. Preparing herself momentarily, Sinead flung herself forwards arms out-stretched in a desperate attempt to grab onto the metal.

She slammed against the frame with a bone-jarring thump. She clung on wearily to the bars, swaying as she felt something crack and her head spin so dizzyingly that the world looked upside down. The sour taste of blood in her mouth brought Sinead's mind back to Earth.

She looped her left arm over the gates highest rail and hauled herself up after it. Once she reached the top, Sinead tumbled to the ground.

"Ugh," she groaned as she scrambled to her feet again. Sinead checked Ned's watch again. Twenty-five past. Her head cleared of all thoughts except her need to reach the baseball stand.

She began to run, her semi-photographic memory whirring like crazy as she sprinted past the playground. As Sinead skidded to an abrupt halt before she face-planted the wall of the main school building, she spotted it. Taking off once again, she reached the pitch in barely a minute. A red balloon was strung from a bench. Sinead scampered up the steps and along the aisles until she came to the seat. Holding the balloon down was a package wrapped in brown-ish newspaper. The second she picked up the bundle, the paper almost fell off the enclosed equipment.

…A phone, fake IDs and make-up?

Sinead studied the contents curiously. _What_?

Interested and slightly apprehensive, Sinead began to shuffle through the identification cards. It was her, but not. Her eye-brows were darker, her eyes brown and her nose rounder. Her skin was slightly darker and her lips thinner. Puzzled, Sinead tilted her head and read the name. Name: Anna Kontusky, age: twenty-three, Nationality: American.

Hesitantly, Sinead plucked the cell from the mass of papers and switched it on.

_Hello S.S._

_THE PACKAGE location: Pennsylvania Railroad, Suburban Station, Reception._

_Collection time: 10:00 _

_Get it or else. _

_V_

Sinead stared at the message with a sick feeling engulfing her totally. She had to collect a package by ten or her brothers would be killed. She suppressed a sob, drawing her legs towards her body and curled into the foetal position. There was a buzz, a message.

_Cab pick-up time: 9:00_

_Location: outside school_

_Money: in backpack_

_Map: in backpack_

_Backpack: under seat_

Sinead sat back against the bar across the top of the chairs in front. _What_? Her head spun dizzyingly as she re-read the message. She pulled a green rucksack from beneath the chair she was slumped against. Inside, as promised, was money. Lots and lots of money, as well as the map and a whole pile of neatly folded clothes. For a moment Sinead stared at the outfit in bewilderment and then she put the pieces together. She sighed and stood on trembling legs. A quick glance at the watch told her that she had twenty-five minutes to get ready in before meeting the cab and collecting '_THE PACKAGE_'. Sinead gathered the items in her arms (not without a little effort) and began to stumble towards the ladies bathroom.

_Ow_… the mascara stick dropped from Sinead's hand into the sink. _Mascara? More like 'iscarya'. _Sinead smiled grimly, even as she groaned at her awful attempt at a joke, it was better than some others. With an expression that rivalled Natalie's 'eww-peasant' face, Sinead began to inexpertly apply the thick liquid to her lashes.

Sinead tottered along inexperiencedly balancing on the highest heels she had ever worn in her life. Not that _that_ was really saying much considering the highest heels she had ever worn were princess heels back when she was around four and hadn't begun to experience sudden migraines, where she had to write down a formula or complete a sequence, and otherwise risk throwing up. She checked the watch five to nine; it had taken her a while to get the hang of the make-up, let alone copy the hair-style shown in the ID and the clothes… well… Sinead hoped she would never have to wear them again. They were too… girly and frilly and impractical for her. They were the sort of clothes that an agent would never wear, and that was what made the plan so clever, Sinead realized. Nobody would look twice at her, just a girl with a bag going out somewhere.

It had taken her a long time to work out how the boots were popped and the bewildering conclusion little buttons up the top were not meant to come undone had cost her time.

She took off, rushing past the stands and across the pitch, normally she would have run faster but today (as well as having undergone serious surgical treatment) she was on a mission, in a possibly hostile area (although a school building didn't really strike Sinead as the next 'nine-eleven' area, one could never be too careful. She was learning _that_ lesson all over again) and the fact that she was wearing impossibly tight, super-spiky heeled boots didn't help matters either. She ran around the school building, and zigzagged through playground equipment, she attempted to recall the exit of the school perimeters. As she turned a corner to a wooden fence she had a momentary panic-attack, before mentally kicking herself and turning to the left.

Sinead didn't know how she managed to climb the gate again. Perhaps it was flashing numbers, warning her that she only had three minutes to get to the taxi, maybe it was the slight of the shiny black cab parked three spaces from the institute or maybe it was that an alarm suddenly flared off behind her. Yeah, that was probably it.

The warning sound made Sinead jump, catching her skin on the railing of the gate; at first she thought she had been spotted and then her Ekaterina sense kicked in, telling her that if she didn't get over the gate quickly she _would_ be spotted. A light in the house across the road flickered on and Sinead desperately swung herself over the barrier, she thudded to the floor without any of her customary grace. Her knees popped and she scraped her hands on the floor. She glanced ruefully at her bleeding scabs; it wouldn't really make that much difference to her in the long run. She hurried towards the cab, trying to give off an impression to anyone who may have been looking out of their windows for the source of the blaring sound, of complete and utter normality.

_What could that noise be?_ Sinead asked herself in a completely unconvincing voice. _It definitely wasn't me! Of course it wasn't! _The pitifully denying speech continued.

She opened the cab door and sat in the squishy leather seat with the air of someone who was on a mission. The cab driver was used to people with that look on their face, though not usually on those of ditzy-looking teenage girls, with apparently no aptitude for heels and a killer set of eyes. She thrust a wad of cash at him, not looking up as she checked her phone. It wasn't one that he had seen before, with a slim frame and sleek waves and a V emblazoned on the side.

"Pennsylvania Railroad," she spoke in a crisp voice that surprised the taxi driver probably more than the frilliness of her long-sleeved top: "Now." She left no room for argument, as she settled back in the wine-coloured seats with the look of a troubled cat. He stepped on it. When they arrived at the station, the girl got out without another word and sat on a wall beside a house. She sat, and watched the cab. The driver was confused and slightly alarmed, what was she doing? Then, as she folded her arms and looked up at the moon with the resigned expression that was often used by girls when their boyfriend's turned up ten minutes late to whatever they were doing, he worked it out. She was waiting for him to leave. He hesitantly started the ignition, and swivelled the gear-stick. Should he go? This girl could be up to something. He glanced out of his window again; she didn't look like an arsonist, or anything of that ilk. With her pink, frilled top and spiky-heeled shoes, she looked more like a little posh girl waiting for a couple of friends.

He twisted the wheel, mind made up. She wasn't going to do anything and he had no right to intrude on the privacy she obviously wanted. He would regret that decision approximately seven hours later, when he got pulled in for questioning by the police about a suspected terrorist attack. But for now, he thought he was doing the right thing.

Sinead felt the bricks digging in uncomfortably on the backs of her calves as she waited for the taxi driver to finish pulling out of the road. He sent her one last somewhat suspicious look before driving off into the night. Sinead shivered, it was cold and dark and now she was alone. Looking around cautiously all the while, she began to make her way towards the Suburban Station and whatever lay inside.

The second Sinead entered the building through huge, green double doors that arched high above her head, she knew something was wrong. It wasn't that anyone was present in the hall, although that would have been a set-back, or that another alarm went off (Sinead was sure one every morning to wake you up was enough for any one person). It was something, just hanging in the musty air that told Sinead nothing good was going to happen. Call it a sixth sense, or a premonition; it was there. Closing the doors behind her with a barely audible _snick,_ Sinead scowered the perimeter for the package she had been asked to collect. For a brief moment of panic, she thought that nothing was there. She must have come to the wrong place! Then she saw a brown papered parcel squatted under a metal bench where people sat waiting for the queue's to get shorter.

Sinead checked around her again, and rushed towards the opposite wall. She checked her watch, half-past nine. She had time… or so she thought. She drew closer to the bundle; it lay motionless in a crumpled heap. Sinead mentally kicked herself, of course the pack was motionless; it was an inanimate object, for heaven's sake! Sinead reached out one grazed hand for the package, already imagining herself back in the street. Her first mistake.

A bleeping sound startled Sinead so much that she almost dropped the concealed object, careful not to let herself wonder what was inside. She didn't know and didn't want to know what it was that she was collecting for the guy who'd almost had her brother's killed. All she knew was that it probably wasn't going to be anything that was going to fill the world with rainbows and butterflies. _Rainbows and butterflies? _Sinead shook her head, reaching for the phone that had surprised her in the first place, shifting the parcel in the crook of her arm. _I'm becoming more and more invalid-__like;__ I have to stop watching those _Happy Hospital _commercials. _The smiled withered and the small bubble of laughter died in her throat.

_154,154,_

_154,7,172-172,22,7-172,29,67,7,137._

_210_

They had relapsed into the code; Sinead took a moment to process what it said.

_S.S._

_Set the timer._

_V_

She allowed the phone to fall from her hands. _What_? Set what timer? But even as Sinead thought that, she was tearing open the package. A sleek, thin object made of stainless steel stared unfeelingly up at her as Sinead burst into tears. She was absolutely right; she really hadn't wanted to know what was in the package. Another text buzzed, but Sinead ignored it, head still reeling from the last message. _Set the timer._ She didn't have to do anything, Sinead tried to convince herself; she could simply delete the video-footage from the tell-tell twinkling camera's almost hidden in the shadows and leave the station with following the instructions… _'See you soon'. _A cold blast of icy air hit her back, making her turn around. _What_? The door swung closed, but not before Sinead caught a glimpse of an oversized red shoe, another red balloon floated towards her. A different piece of paper was attached to the string, a piece of newspaper. Sinead's eyes almost bulged out of her head as she took in the date, it was tomorrow's paper.

_Tragic Ending for Prodigy Triplets… _Sinead didn't need to read anymore. That was what was going to happen if she didn't set the bomb, so with a screaming conscience growing weaker every second, Sinead pulled the flat object towards her and began to connect the equally mind-blowingly advanced parts together.

Between wiring chords and snapping blocks into place, Sinead wiped away salty tears that stung her eyes. _What was she doing? _She twisted the final V-shaped piece into position and pressed her finger to the on-button. _She was saving her brothers. _A flashing red light started up, signalling the beginning of the countdown. She had two minutes, glancing at the watch again; she saw that it was ten o'clock exactly. She had done it.

She grabbed the phone, and checked the last text in her inbox.

_Just a precaution, get out before explosion. Leave ID's on the above bench. It cannot be traced back to you. Well done, Starling. __Your brothers are safe._

Sinead emptied out all the identifications and pulled off the suede boots with relish, no more heels for her. As she stole out of the station and took off back the way she had come with the intention of getting as far away from the scene of the soon-to-be crime. She was several streets when she heard the resounding bang. She didn't see any smoke or flying debris in the air, just a bang, and then the silence that had returned as soon as it had left filled the air. Sinead slowed to a walk, the heaviness of her actions settling on her shoulders like a dead-weight. She hunched down, drawing her arms around herself, to prevent the tears and fear following the immense feeling of self-disgust. A police siren cut through Sinead's heavy thoughts that hung as grey as mist in the air surrounding her; she stumbled forwards again.

An encounter with the cops wasn't something that's he particularly wanted. Without thinking, Sinead pulled her hair from the twisted bun and wiped the smudged make-up that had been clogging her pores for a good hour from her face, pulling a jacket over the top of her ridiculously lacy shirt. She continued to walk in the direction that she hoped would lead her to the hospital before morning. Her semi-photographic memory had done a good job at memorizing the streets, as Sinead walked down a road with oak trees outside almost every house.

Sinead abruptly remembered the park that was like a muddy shortcut to the road where the hospital was located. She trooped left and hopped over a sty styled gate, letting the events finally overwhelm her Sinead flopped down on the railing by the lake that was meant to prevent children from falling in. Sinead arched her neck backwards, taking in the pleasant sight of the stars that were out of place in Sinead's gloomy world. Sinead pulled out the phone and looked at it.

_Your brothers are safe. _Sinead could almost see the silently implied _yet_. No, they weren't safe, this _V_ had found them once; he could do it again, and again. Sinead held back a frustrated scream that would have undoubtedly made her sound like a teenage girl angsting after a boy, and hurled the phone as hard as she could into the water. It struck the still water with a satisfying cracking sound; ripples ran along the surface some chasing others, like a game of cat and mouse, much like the version Sinead was now playing in, but without the murder of their brothers hanging over their heads.

_What heads?_ Sinead berated herself half-heartedly. _It's just water ripples… that I can really empathize with? _She knew that this was a side-effect, possibly trauma; although not from the shock of the Franklin Institute as she would have to convince the doctors the next day.

This was it. Sinead knew it. Whoever this enigmatic _V_ knew it too. She was a pawn of his now, putty in his hands. He could do with her as he wished, until her brothers were healed. And they would be healed; Sinead was going to start working on the cures as soon as possible because it would be safer that way, for all of them. She would work out the treatments soon enough, Sinead reassured herself.

Then she got up, brushing the dirt from her jeans and started to make her way back towards the hospital building that she could already see over the top of some trees, illuminated in the moonlight. Sinead Starling's dealings with the mysterious and ruthless _V_ were over; or so she thought.

* * *

"_It's finished."_ She stated firmly, brushing back her hair carefully.

He laughed quietly, eying her through the fish-eye lens that had been planted on her, how little the Starling girl knew. A cruel grin spread across his face, it had only just begun.


End file.
